Dell Introduces PCs Despite SEC Troubles
By Doug Olenick -- TWICE, 9/25/2006
New York— The day after Dell reported it would delay filing its fiscal second quarter Form 10-Q due to an investigation being conducted by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission, the company forged ahead with a product release.
The decision to delay the filing was announced on Sept. 11 after the SEC inquiry and an internal audit raised questions regarding the company's accounting and financial reporting procedures. In addition, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York has subpoenaed documents related to the company's financial reporting from 2002 to the present.
“We are fully cooperating with the investigations and working to resolve any and all issues raised in connection with those investigations as quickly as possible, and we will take any appropriate remedial or corrective actions to address any problems,” Chairman Michael Dell said.
Dell did not give a new filing date, but stated the 10-Q would be filed as soon as possible.
Notwithstanding the company's legal issues, it introduced four new configure-to-order models under its Dimension line, the E520, E521, C521 and the XPS 210.
The XPS 210's options include an Intel Pentium D processor with Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA or ATI graphics, TV tuner and various optical and memory configurations. The unit has the ability to work in either the vertical or horizontal position. The base version carries a $1,190 price tag.
The E520, E521 and C521 have respective starting price points of $719, $329 and $359, respectively. All ship with Windows Media Center and are upgradeable to Vista when that operating system becomes available next year.
Configuration possibilities for the first two models are Intel's Core 2 Duo for the E520 or the AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor for the E521 with two hard drives, dual TV tuners, sounds cards, 7.1 audio, ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards available for both models.
The C521 is a slim-line version of the previous models that uses the AMD chip, single optical and had drives, and a single TV tuner.
